a.) when i have captured, i save the captured files not in drive F (described in 4. but on QNAP or external)...to have more drive space

b.) when captured files will be used in a project, i import them from QNAP

c.) when a project is finished, i totaly export all in the project used files (captured, project, used music) to QNAP or external drive for archive and to get more space in drive E and F (described in 3. an 4.)

D.) MY QUESTIONS

a.) what do y think about my suggested for the new configuration und upgrade

b.) where and what are my general mistakes

c.) which areca controller should i use to have also future options, is it better to use one in combination with upgrading internal memory

d.) does it make sense to create 2 Raid 0 (as described in 3. an 4.)

e.) should i use for Raid 0 1 TB or 2 TB drives (and which one shoud i use)

for examle in the manual of areca i found that not all drives are compatible, some may make problems (i dont have any experiance)

f.) does it make sense to plan to upgrade drives in a mobile storage case or is it necessary to change the case now to a very big one now (rackmount) (if this would be necessary i have room-space problems at the working place.

Next memory: For the time being you have sufficient memory and with current prices it does not look interesting to invest in 4 GB sticks. Wait and see how CS5 will perform in the future would be my advise.

Disk setup: You make backups of your C drive to an external with Acronis. So, nothing to do about that. It is good.

Then you have 3 VR's that can easily be used in either raid0 or raid5 from the motherboard on the ICHR10 chip. I would prefer raid5 despite the load on the CPU for security reasons and accept the lesser performance. In addition, I think that disk performance will not be a limiting factor if you do not overclock your 920.

Then your media disks. Before I can give you a definite answer, can you give me an indication of how many disks you can fit in or how many 5.25" bays you have available. Consider too, that it may be worthwhile to remove any fan/temperature displays that occupy a 5.25" bay.

Raid controller: that depends on the number of disks you can fit in or that you may want to attach in the future with an external drive cage, even though your space is limited. So please answer my previous question first and I'll follow up on it.

In the past i visited Addonis and Supermicro web sits too to see ("how i can solve the future case situation") whats possible, but there are so many possibilities and becouse of less experiance i am unable without help to find the right "making sense" further case config.

I was thinking about to work with backplanes or exertnal storages or new cases.

My my working room allows max high of 50-52 cm for cases (wide and depth are no problem).

How many future drives, its not clear for me, let me answer from my stomach maybe up to 5 drives (5x 1 TB or better 5x 2 TB ??), if necessary i am willing to upgrade in future.

Great news because that gives you a lot of options. With one BR burner installed you have 9 5.25" bays left.

One is to install 3 SuperMicro cages (you don't need to install them all at the same time, but nice for the future) to add up to 15 3.25" disks in hot swappable bays. Or you can choose to use two SuperMicro cages for 10 3.25" disks and add 3 Addonics cages for an additional 12 2.5" disks.

Lots of choices here and you are not really limited by your case. You may be in terms of cooling however.

C: Velociraptor for OS & Programs

D: 3 x Velociraptor in raid 5 on the mobo for pagefile, media cache, previews like you intended

E: initially 4 or 5 disks (1 or 2 TB, up to you) in raid 3 for media

Raid controller: Areca ARC-1680 iX-12 with 2 GB ECC cache and BBM.

I suggest the 12 version over the 8 version because it has the possibility to expand cache memory from the default 256 MB up to 4 GB, although one wonders if anything more than 2 GB is worthwhile, given the price difference between the 2 and 4 G sticks.

With this configuration you have the possibility to add a multitude of disks to expand your storage and increase the speed of your raid if you wish.

So all you need is two SuperMicro cages to start with, the disks and the Areca controller with cache and BBM.